We are on the cusp of a technological revolution whereby increasingly sophisticated tasks can be handed over from humans to machines. Organizations are embracing advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, and natural language technology to adopt platforms that can "learn" from experience and actually interact with users. The next wave of these chatbots will have enhanced real-time data analytics and automation capabilities and the ability to integrate intelligence across multiple digital channels to engage customers in natural conversations using voice or text. When you have a question about a product or service, you will be presented with the best agent, who possesses the entire company's collective experience and a huge wealth of knowledge to address your issue. Think about what happens today when you call your bank or the help desk of an ecommerce site.

Intelligent personal assistants have the real potential to transform our daily lives in the nearest future. At least this is what Gartner says in its report on the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017. For businesses, this means an excellent opportunity to refine their offers and improve customer experience, providing smarter and more effective ways to handle routine tasks. The great thing about Intelligent apps is that they can become integrated with almost every area of a customer's life. Over the last few years, more and more smart connected devices have been hitting the market, and all these gadgets are usually augmented with digital conversational interfaces.

If you have to deal with transcribing interviews as part of your daily work (like we do), you'll find a welcome partner in the new Otter app. Developed by former employees from Google and a speech-recognition veteran Nuance, Otter is a free service that transcribes speech on the go through the power of artificial intelligence (AI).

This is a guest blog post by Siva K. Syamala, Senior Developer from Y-cam Solutions. In her own words, "Y-cam is a provider of high quality security video solutions, our vision is to make smart home security easy and accessible to all." Home security is a very important constituent in home automation and the use of the Internet of Things. Y-cam Solutions Limited, with the help of Amazon as a backbone, has delivered a smart security system that can be monitored and controlled from anywhere in the world with a smart phone. To improve the alerts, notifications, and the way to control the system, Y-cam uses Amazon Polly to provide a first class AI service where the user interacts with the security system through speech.